Chapter Thirty-One
The drive from Atlanta to Seattle stretched ahead like a ribbon of possibility, winding through miles of road and miles of thought.
Inside the van was a mix of jubilant wonder and groggy comradery.
Shep’s bandmates hummed unfinished melodies, banging out rhythms on their knees, passing around half-tuned guitars and bags of potato chips like lifelines.
Shep was writing lyrics on the back of a diner receipt.
The van smelled like sweat, vinyl seats, and the faint sweetness of incense Megan had lit to mask the funk.
Eleanor tried to keep pace with the noise, tossing in harmony lines when asked, offering notes on arrangements, but her thoughts kept drifting back to the stage in Atlanta.
To that moment, spotlight hot on her scalp, guitar snug against her hip, when she’d sung the lullaby turned ballad she once wrote for her daughter.
There had been songs before that—so many songs.
Youthful, hungry songs. Songs she thought might win her a record deal back when the world still had her name on its tongue.
But that song—the one for Leanne—had been something else.
Came from somewhere deeper than ambition.
Bone-and-blood music. A love letter built from chords.
As she sang, she’d imagined her daughter’s face in the crowd. Imagined Nora beside Leanne. She could almost hear their voices rising up in the chorus—ghost harmonies above the crowd.
Eleanor closed her eyes and leaned her head against the side window, feeling a little guilty from having run away from them again. Roxy was curled in her lap, warm and soft as a well-loved pillow. Eleanor’s fingers absently traced the dog’s smooth back, the rhythm of the van a lullaby of its own.
“Who wants to stop at Graceland?” piped the girl behind the wheel—Maxie, maybe. Or Megan? Eleanor couldn’t remember. The names in this van were fluid things. And what was she rambling on about, a land full of grace?
“I’ve been dying to see it,” the girl continued. “And I heard sometimes Elvis comes out and signs autographs. Can you believe it?”
Eleanor’s eyes popped open. Graceland. Elvis.
“Let’s do it!” Shep whooped from the back, and the rest of the band hooted in agreement.
Eleanor sat a little taller, heart doing something dangerously close to fluttering.
She loved Elvis. Ever since he scandalized everyone with the wriggle of his hips onstage.
The rawness of his sound. The way he made the whole country question what music could be—just like she’d used to want to do.
A fleeting memory, like a whisper, caressed her memory.
Her and Nora in the kitchen. Nora must have been five years old at the time, and they were dancing to “Heartbreak Hotel,” and Eleanor had lowered her voice, singing like Elvis to Nora’s delight.
She wasn’t about to pass up a visit to the King’s palace.
The van screeched off the exit, tires catching gravel, someone in the back screaming joyfully like they were heading to the moon, while Eleanor tried not to curse Megan’s driving—at least she remembered her name now.
They wove through Memphis traffic, then slowed, nearing the estate.
Cars were already lined along the curb like worshipful pilgrims. Lawn chairs propped up on hoods.
Fans leaned against fences, clutched magazines and Polaroid cameras, eyes trained on the mansion’s gate like Elvis might emerge any second with a guitar in one hand and a peanut butter sandwich in the other.
Graceland sat behind those gates like a southern daydream.
The mansion was white-columned and wide-porched, with green shutters and crisp symmetry that didn’t feel real in the August heat.
The iron gates bore musical notes curled into the design, and a sea of fans stood in front of them, some swaying, some singing, some just waiting.
The trees out front were heavy with moss and humidity.
Someone had tied a scarf to the gate. Someone else had left flowers.
“Incredible,” Shep said, breathless. “One day, I’m going to have a place like this. People lining up around the block.”
He glanced at Eleanor, his grin slipping from friendly to flirtatious. “Maybe you’ll be there with me. Keep the groupies in line.”
“Don’t tempt me, young man,” she said with a laugh, swatting his arm. But the laugh was a thin thing, hollow around the edges. Because she knew—this wasn’t her life. This was a borrowed dream. A detour. A firework mid-fizzle.
One day, the road trip would end. The amps would quiet. The curtain would fall.
And she would go home. And then she’d have to leave her home. Live with Leanne or, worse, one of those homes for old people where they went to die but didn’t even realize it.
A fog would set in. A version of herself who didn’t remember music. Or Roxy. Or even Leanne and Nora.
The thought clutched her chest, a phantom hand.
Still, she pulled herself together as the van sputtered to a stop.
She followed the band, who poured out onto the street, joining the crowd.
Someone nearby played Elvis on a portable radio, and a little boy with what looked like grape jam smeared around his mouth sang along, not even close to in tune but still adorable.
Eleanor smiled and pressed closer to the gate, just another fan with a heart full of what-ifs.
“He’s not here,” a young man muttered with a disappointed shrug. “I heard he flew back to Vegas.”
A quiet sigh passed through the crowd like a breeze.
Eleanor’s shoulders sagged just a bit. She’d hoped, selfishly, to see him, not just for the story she could one day pass along to Nora, but because part of her longed to witness a musician who had built the kind of full life she’d never quite gotten to chase.
Shep and his band, undeterred, had pulled out their Polaroid camera, mugging for the lens in front of the iron gates. They leaned into one another, making peace signs and fists in the air, snapping the memory into glossy immortality—hoping the photos would survive the glove box journey to Seattle.
When they were packing up and turning to leave, the massive double doors of Graceland cracked open.
And a child burst out.
A tiny girl with a shock of dark hair and a tutu that didn’t quite match her boots.
Lisa Marie Presley, shrieking with laughter, bounded down the walkway, her arms flailing like she was ready to fly.
A woman—elegant, dark-haired, impeccably dressed even in the heat—chased after her, heels clicking against the walkway with marble-like music.
“Oh my God, it’s Priscilla and Lisa Marie!” someone squealed behind Eleanor.
Eleanor blinked, frozen, the sight striking something tender and long buried in her chest. The simplicity of it.
The unfiltered joy. She remembered chasing Leanne like that, a giggling toddler in saddle shoes, her little hands covered in whatever mess she’d gotten into.
Motherhood had been its own kind of music—messy, all-consuming, beautiful.
If she could go back, she wouldn’t trade it.
She just wished she hadn’t been made to choose one or the other. Wished she’d been able to have both.
Then, like something out of a dream, he stepped onto the porch.
Elvis.
Hair thick and glossy, just a little tousled like he’d run his hands through it on the way out the door.
Handsome in a white leisure suit, collar open, gold chain catching the Tennessee sun like a spotlight.
His skin had the warm flush of someone still in love with his home, and his smile, wide and southern-sweet, lit up the entire lawn.
The crowd gasped. Shrieked. Cameras clicked. A chick—as the youths said—fainted.
Eleanor didn’t move. She was too busy trying to keep her heart from bursting out of her chest as he sauntered toward the gate.
Then he looked right at her.
Not just glanced. Looked. Right into her eyes like he was trying to place her.
“You look familiar.” Elvis’s brow furrowed, head tilting. “Have we met?”
Every head turned toward Eleanor, their expressions shifting from starstruck to curious.
Eleanor froze. She felt suddenly small, painfully aware of the wrinkles in her purple blouse and the way her silver hair clung to her forehead from the humidity. She reached up, smoothing it, shifting slightly closer to Shep—her anchor amid the surreal.
“Oh my God—is that the Dame of Rock and Roll?!” someone gasped. “And Shep Moon!”
Eleanor’s spine lengthened instinctively, her narrow shoulders drawing back. But still, she didn’t say a word.
Ever her tiny herald, Roxy, gave a sharp, approving yip from her bag—confirming what they were all thinking.
Elvis grinned. Full wattage. He raised his hand in a mock salute.
“An honor,” he said, with that drawl that made half the country weak in the knees.
Eleanor nearly swooned. If not for Megan gripping her elbow, she might have.
And just like that, he turned back toward his family waiting for him on the lawn, completely unaware that the world had tilted slightly just because of that modest, yet significant exchange.
The crowd didn’t follow him. Instead, they surged forward in her direction. Eleanor’s free hand clasped on to Megan, the band surrounding her like her own personal bodyguards.
“Can I get your autograph?”
“Mama Lightning, sign my sleeve?”
“Shep, man, your last set shredded!”
Eleanor exchanged a look with Shep, and he just smirked, passing her a marker as if they’d rehearsed this a thousand times. And maybe they had in their dreams.
She signed her name on a concert program. On a tie-dye headband. On a girl’s bare shoulder. Someone handed her a napkin. Someone else a torn-up road map.
Eleanor Bell wasn’t just chasing a dream anymore—she was the dream.